Hunted (17 page)

'Look at the head,' said Alex quietly. 'The hyenas can't have done that.' The head was a big mass of hacked meat, brutally disfigured. Bullet holes formed a small scatter pattern between the eye and the ear. Just below was a big, bloody hole where a tusk had been ripped out. There were large brutal slashes in the face on the other side too. The trunk had been hacked off and discarded. It lay next to the body like the carcass of a strange monster.

'Boudicca,' said Gaston softly to himself.

'We met her on the way in,' murmured Hex quietly.

'She'd been here for forty years,' said Amber.

'That's what the poachers do,' said Gaston. 'I'm sorry you had to see this.'

He closed the flaps but the balloon continued to descend. The hyenas slunk back and continued their meal. The air was filled with the sounds of their savage feeding - growling, grinding, whooping and cackling. Gaston opened the regulator and the roar of the burner drowned out all other noise.

17
A RICH STRANGER

Patrick staggered through the door, supporting a man oh his shoulder.

Li, coming down the stairs after taking a shower, saw their silhouette. She sprinted towards them. 'Patrick, can I help?'

'Take his legs,' said Patrick, getting both his arms under the man's shoulders. 'We'll take him to the staff room.' Walking backwards, Patrick manoeuvred the man behind the reception desk and into the room beyond. 'We'll put him on the table,' he said, 'on a count of three. One . . . two . . . three . . .' Together he and Li lifted the man onto the table in the middle of the room.

'What happened?' said Li.

The man was wearing a green shirt and dirty grey trousers. He shook his head from side to side, as though he was having a bad dream. One arm was hugely swollen; the whole of the forearm was bright red with purple blotches. Some of the skin was erupting in blisters. With his uninjured arm he clutched a dirty khaki bag.

Paulo rushed into the room. 'What's going on?'

Patrick explained. 'I was out on patrol. I found him on the edge of the road about a kilometre away. He was crawling along. I thought he was drunk, but he's been bitten by a snake.' He headed for the door. 'I'll phone the paramedics.'

Li leaned over the man. A sharp smell hit her as the man groaned and muttered to himself. 'I think he's probably drunk too,' she said. She tried to lift the man's bag but he grabbed it back. 'It's OK,' she said to him, 'we're just trying to find out who you are. Help is on its way.' The man gave a shout and clutched the bag even more tightly.

Li straightened up. 'Well, at least he's still breathing.'

'He's tried to put a tourniquet on,' said Paulo. 'Look.' He moved the bag aside to show Li. Just above the man's elbow was a dirty yellow bandanna. Paulo loosened it but left it around the man's arm. 'The course I went on said you shouldn't put a tourniquet on a snake bite,' he commented.

Patrick came back in. 'The paramedics are on their way.'

The man started to gasp. His face was clammy and pouring with sweat.

'He's having trouble breathing,' said Li.

'They said if this happened to give him an injection of adrenaline. We've got some in the emergency kit.' Patrick opened a drawer marked with a green cross and grabbed an object that looked like a pen. It was a syringe, pre-filled with adrenaline for emergencies such as snake bites or allergic reactions. Ripping the wrapper off, he looked at it nervously and prepared to plunge it into the man's shoulder.

'No!' cried Li. 'It's got to be subcutaneous for a snake bite. Here, let me.' Patrick looked only too pleased to hand the pen to her. She pinched up a fold of skin on the man's arm, above the tourniquet, positioned the needle at right angles to his arm and fired. 'If you do it into the muscle you might cause him more problems.' She passed the spent needle to Patrick.

The man suddenly went still, like a statue, his mouth open in a soundless O.

Li felt for a pulse on the man's neck. 'His heart's still beating.'

Without a moment's hesitation, Paulo peered into the open mouth. 'No obstructions,' he said. 'I'm going to have to give him the kiss of life.' He tilted the man's head back, held the nose and blew into the mouth. He gave three breaths, slowly, then tilted his head to look at the man's chest. 'He's still not breathing,' he said. He took a breath, leaned over the man and exhaled slowly into his mouth.

There was a commotion of people arriving in the lobby. Gaston came through, with Amber, Hex and Alex close behind.

Amber recognized the yellow bandanna instantly. 'My God!' she cried. 'He's one of the poachers.'

Paulo took another breath and blew into the man's mouth again. But his eyes looked confused.

'He's dying,' said Li.

'Serves him right,' said Gaston. 'They've just killed another elephant.'

'He's breathing now anyway,' said Li.

They hadn't noticed the other person who had arrived. Joe Chandler was watching from the doorway.

Silence settled on the room like a blanket. All eyes were on Joe. He must have heard everything. For a moment he did nothing--merely looked at the group around the poacher. Then he walked up to the table and pulled at the khaki bag the man was holding. The man tried to resist. Joe pulled it hard. 'Give it to me,' he said in a growl, and the man finally let go of the bag.

'Excuse me,' said Paulo quietly. 'I need to wash my mouth out.' He hurried from the room.

Joe unbuckled the bag - a design of diamond shapes showed through the accumulated dirt on the back. He tipped out the contents, threw the bag away and looked at the slim wad of notes that had landed on the man's chest. The poacher raised his eyes to him, wanting to take his money but not daring to move while Joe's steely gaze was on him.

Joe picked up the wad of notes and held it out between thumb and forefinger. 'Somebody else count this. It smells of blood.'

Alex took it numbly. The notes were crisp, still in the wrapper from the bank. He flipped through them. 'They're unused American hundred-dollar bills.'

Amber was watching him. 'There must be about a thousand bucks here.'

Li nodded. 'He didn't get currency like that from round here. Somebody must be financing the poachers from the outside.'

Joe leaned over the poacher. 'Where did you get this, scumbag?'

The poacher looked back at him with frightened eyes, but didn't say anything.

'Talk to me, dammit,' insisted Joe. He reached for the man's collar.

Patrick pulled Joe away. 'There's no way he'll talk to you, Chief. Probably doesn't even understand what you're saying.'

'We don't need him to talk,' said Hex. All eyes turned to him. 'The numbers on the notes are consecutive. That means they're traceable. I'll get onto John Middleton with the serial numbers and see what he can find out.'

Paulo had a bottle of Listerine, which he swigged at regularly and swallowed. He kept remembering what it was like being lip to lip with the poacher. The Listerine seared his mouth and throat, but it was better than that memory. He could still taste the cheap whisky and the smell of cigarettes on the man's breath.

The paramedics had taken the poacher away. Joe had called the police and told them which hospital he was going to. Now Paulo joined the rest of Alpha Force, along with Patrick, Gaston and Joe, in the lounge, to discuss what to do next.

'The poaching is out of control,' said Joe. 'As fast as we can tag the elephants, they're being killed.'

'Do you think it's all the same group of poachers?' said Alex.

'Were the elephants all killed the same way?' asked Hex.

Gaston shrugged. 'The way they were killed isn't significant. Yes, they were shot and hacked about in the same way, but it's just the best way to get tusks off a dead elephant. It doesn't mean it's the same bunch.'

'One lot set a trap - the one Tessa fell into,' said Amber. 'What about that?'

'Yes, that doesn't make sense,' said Joe. 'You don't catch elephants in a pit. The bastards must be after big cats as well. Still, at least we haven't found any more pits, so they must be concentrating on our elephants.'

Li was shaking her head. 'I thought this kind of thing died out years ago. Is there really still a big demand for ivory?'

'Of course there is,' said Patrick. 'And for animal skins. It pays better than farming.'

'Patrick, this isn't small-time poaching to feed a family,' said Joe emphatically. 'That scumbag had a thousand dollars. His family could eat for years and years on that. A thousand dollars is about twenty tusks. That's large-scale poaching - there's something big going on.'

'So,' said Alex, 'there must be a mastermind behind all this, paying the poachers. If we want to stop it, we have to find out who that is.'

Hex had his palmtop beside him. It gave a low vibrating noise. He'd got mail. He pressed a key to access his inbox.

'Is that my uncle?' said Amber, trying to read the screen over his shoulder.

'Looks like it,' said Hex. He scanned the e-mail. 'Ah, this is interesting. Those notes were printed four months ago and shipped to a bank in Hong Kong.'

'Hong Kong?' said Patrick.

'That figures,' said Joe. 'Most of the ivory ends up in the Far East.'

'This sounds like a very organized operation,' said Paulo. 'The question is, how did the money get here?'

'That poacher had been drinking, right?' said Amber. 'He'd been out celebrating. He must have been rather conspicuous flashing all that cash around. Perhaps someone saw him.'

Li picked up on her train of thought. 'We know which road he was found on, right? Are there any settlements near there?'

'Not within the park, obviously,' said Joe. 'But I can show you a few nearby.'

'He came from Senga,' said Patrick. 'The design on his bag is something I've seen there. There's a woman who makes them.'